Chicago Gun Ban May Test Ruling

CHICAGO -- One small reflection of Chicago's bloody year is a sign outside a South Side school that says, "Congratulations Class of 2008. Stop the Violence." The school is not a college or a high school, but Carnegie Elementary in Woodlawn.

In a city where homicide rates have risen by 13 percent over the same period last year and 26 students were killed by gunfire in the past school year, Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) thinks the Supreme Court majority that overturned the District's gun ban last month is detached from urban reality.

"If they think that's the answer, then they're greatly mistaken," Daley protested after hearing that Chicago's 26-year-old gun law is at risk. "Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a gun and I have a gun, and we'll settle in the streets."

Chicago officials say they have reason to be concerned about the high court's decision. The city looks likely to provide the next critical test of the justices' ruling as courts decide how far the decision extends to other cities and the 50 states.

Within hours of the 5 to 4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, gun rights groups filed fresh challenges to Chicago's restrictions.

Scalia, who spent five years as a law professor at the University of Chicago, close to some of the city's most violent precincts, made clear that some restrictions would be permitted, but the majority opinion left unclear what standards courts should use to assess them.

"Nothing in our opinion," Scalia said, "should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.''

Daley and Jody Weis, Chicago's police superintendent, contend that strict gun laws are a needed and justifiable tool. Weis, a longtime FBI veteran, said the court's ruling will "no doubt" make police work harder in a city in which 75 percent of all murders are committed with firearms.

Chicago's murder totals, like those in many large cities, have fallen to less than half the number of the bloody early 1990s. Yet 442 people were killed in the city last year, prompting a debate about tactics, including the effectiveness of a gun ban enacted in 1982.

It was a subject widely discussed after the court's ruling.

"If you ban guns for law-abiding citizens, you will just create a black market with more profit and increase the number of guns on the street," said Tom Sibley, 38, a graphic designer who lives in a southwest Chicago neighborhood where gang violence is commonplace. He opposes the ban.

Stephanie Lewis, 16, was surprised to learn that the ban exists, considering the availability of guns.